"It would have been bad news - in spades," he wrote

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As my interest has shifted from the topical news narrative to reports on the global deep state, I am somewhat startled at what is available in the public domain (if not on Public Radio). An example, stumbled across this evening: a Guardian report on a declassified document about a 1961 US nuclear weapons accident that few people under 60 have heard of:

The accident happened when a B-52 bomber got into trouble, having embarked from Seymour Johnson Air Force base in Goldsboro for a routine flight along the East Coast. As it went into a tailspin, the hydrogen bombs it was carrying became separated. One fell into a field near Faro, North Carolina, its parachute draped in the branches of a tree; the other plummeted into a meadow off Big Daddy's Road.

Jones found that of the four safety mechanisms in the Faro bomb, designed to prevent unintended detonation, three failed to operate properly. When the bomb hit the ground, a firing signal was sent to the nuclear core of the device, and it was only that final, highly vulnerable switch that averted calamity. "The MK 39 Mod 2 bomb did not possess adequate safety for the airborne alert role in the B-52," Jones concludes.

The Jones being quoted is a gentleman named Parker Jones, whom the Guardian identifies as "a senior engineer in the Sandia national laboratories responsible for the mechanical safety of nuclear weapons". The title of this post quotes a remark by Mr. Jones in characterizing the results if that fourth safety switch had failed along with the other three.

It seems clear to me that the archives of the global deep state must be jam-packed with files that are every bit as exciting as this one. Read the whole Guardian story; it's short.

Posting about topical current events is pointless

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[Editor's note: the following text isn't written very well.]

I'm about done with trying to post about stuff that's in the news now-now-now. I'll fade away sometime during this Syria issue and try to focus on a bigger picture with reference to journalists and writers who perform real reporting and analysis outside of the disgusting narrative-formation machine.

Was just listening to President Peace Prize on the radio, in high dudgeon, ask his "liberal friends" how they could reconcile their beliefs with images of children writhing and dying on cold hospital floors in Syria. This kind of argument is one of the core tactics of classic propaganda: an appeal to emotion that bypasses reason. Therefore, it's not an argument at all. Since our schools don't teach rhetoric and applied logic, this cheap-jack public speaking technique ties most people in knots---especially liberals who are "troubled" by issues such as the Obama-propelled NSA surveillance state and the proposed launching of missile attacks on weak countries without a compelling US national interest. Liberal blogs are full of sentiment along the lines that while they don't agree with the President on these issues, he's still a sincere and awesome man who they like and who shares their values. And this sentiment also carries a halo effect to produce comments like this one from Balloon Juice:

Even with the NSA and Syria and whatever other Watergates I’ve forgotten about, it’s hard not to feel good about the future of the Democratic party right now. 

All because Rush Limbaugh wrote a stupid book that must be mocked. Why should this fool be cheered by the future of a Democratic party that can swallow any Republican-type policy atrocity as long as their own guy is in charge? It's as if they think Republicans don't already control all three branches of the government through obstructionism, domination of mainstream media, and undiminished mastery of fomenting the worst instincts of the populace. The Democratic version of this crypto-fascist performance art is acceptable because they like their president's style?

Apropos of a bigger picture, I'd like to suggest a few books that offer some nonconventional perspective. Importantly, they were authored outside the corporate narratives that constrain our imaginations. Start with Four Arguments For The Elimination Of Television, by Jerry Mander. You can get by with reading Part I of the book; Part II is the same material, but written in a more scholarly style with documentation and references. (A significant amount of the material pertaining to the physical harmfulness of CRT-based TVs is passe or overcome by later developments, but all the important principles remain valid and prophetic, in my view.)

If you want to improve your understanding of political conservatism and all its apparent self-contradictions, read The Reactionary Mind, by Corey Robin. Starting from the correct proposition that universities do a poor job of educating students---even political science students---about conservatism and its origins, Robin gets to the origins of the ideology back to Thomas Hobbes, who even predates conservative godfather Edmund Burke. Using the writings of all the seminal conservative thinkers, up through Ayn Rand and Bill Buckley (and later), Robin makes a compelling case that the real tenets of conservatism are much different than what it's proponents have professed to the rest of us.

Finally, track down a copy of Vaclav Havel's Power of the Powerless to read, from the pen of a 20th century dissident with more guts than an abattoir, how authoritarian states begin to lose their hold when citizens refocus on the true aims of life. And remember that formulation: the true aims of life, or the authentic aims of life, or the genuine aims of life.

This last document is important for what I wish to start writing about as I can purge myself of the "dailiness" of the corporate narrative machine. Following it is such a drag, and trying to discuss it with people who believe in it ("news junkies") is worse.

Real Scandal No. 1: Global Banking Conspiracy

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Even at the ten-foot-pole distance I keep from news media I am still hearing echoes of the "IRS scandal" in which field personnel applied certain keywords to screen for potential tax-evasion schemes by possibly illegitimate nonprofit political groups. Arguably, depending on the specifics, the story could be important enough to continue dissecting. I don't buy it, though: problem discovered, plausible explanation extracted, congressional hearings held, officials held accountable with loss of jobs, and dire warnings of jackbooted IRS thugs hiding in the hosta patch.

I've heard no echoes, though---not even on The Liberal NPR---about

the Libor scandal, in which at least three – and perhaps as many as 16 – of the name-brand too-big-to-fail banks have been manipulating global interest rates, in the process messing around with the prices of upward of $500 trillion (that's trillion, with a "t") worth of financial instruments.

The Libor scandal is last year's news, so corporate media and political celebrities long ago directed everyone to look forward instead of indulging in fingerpointing and recriminations in order to avoid Tearing The Nation Apart With Partisan Bickering. So, fair enough: no echoes.

But have you even heard a peep about this one anywhere outside of Rolling Stone?

Regulators are looking into whether or not a small group of brokers at ICAP may have worked with up to 15 of the world's largest banks to manipulate ISDAfix, a benchmark number used around the world to calculate the prices of interest-rate swaps.

Interest-rate swaps are a tool used by big cities, major corporations and sovereign governments to manage their debt, and the scale of their use is almost unimaginably massive. It's about a $379 trillion market, meaning that any manipulation would affect a pile of assets about 100 times the size of the United States federal budget.

Matt Taibbi reported on the ISDAfix, um... fix in April. I understand that this was literally months ago (as of today, at least). But, seriously. Considering Libor and ISDAfix only, this is an issue of price fixing and insider trading that rigs markets encompassing about $880 trillion in financial assets. According to my arithmetic, that's getting close to $1 quadrillion.

If you are interested in the parallels between the crime syndicate and international financial institutions, I recommend that you read Taibbi's whole piece. If you're not that interested, at least keep in mind the figure of $1 quadrillion when you hear Tea Party conservatives complaining about the (phony) looming Social Security bankruptcy or marveling about which planet a stack of dollar bills in the amount of the (falling) federal deficit would reach.

Think about it next time you hear Fiscally Responsible Moderates lament the fact that public-sector pensions, mass transit, and safe bridges are no longer luxuries "we" can afford, because transnational financial pirates routinely loot the funds supporting such projects.

At the very least, do click through to the Taibbi story and read the first paragraph. It's a perfect Fifty50 footnote for any story I tag with the label sympathy for the wingnut.

Raise your hand if you smell horseshit

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NPR, my picture window into the corporate media bordello, has been flogging the marathon bombing story all week despite the fact that one of the suspects is as dead as bacon and the other one is in tighter custody than The Joker (Chechnyan pun intended). You see, it's just desperately important that we find out how Tamerlan was radicalized as long as there's some way we can link it to his overseas travel a few years ago. Because if we find that out, then we have a genuine case of "international terror" by "Muslim radicals." And that would give authorities to deploy killer drones in US skies under a plan that even the libertarian Rand Paul can approve of (see paragraph 5).

Since it's still somewhat early in terms of crafting the official marathon bomber narrative, it's a good time to observe how the process works. News editing decisions help to create a bias toward an official narrative by highlighting certain facts (or rumors or unsourced assertions) that support it while ignoring other facts that don't fit the story line. And so this week the storytellers are busy composing a portrait of vicious, desperate international terrorists who had New York City in its sights next. The trouble with that story line is this and this. Have any of you heard, via mainstream news media, that there are good reasons to ask whether our present-day Saccho and Vanzetti really were planning to take their pressure cookers to Manhattan? I haven't. Yet mitigating facts are right out there in public, non-obscure reporting channels like The Boston Globe and Esquire.

And furthermore, how about this: despite initial media reports depicting a teenage Chechnyan desperado shooting it out with police from his bunker in a Watertown, MA, drydocked cabin cruiser, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was not armed when he was captured. He was halfway shot to pieces, though. My point isn't to second-guess how police do their jobs in a situation like this, but to second-guess the editorial judgments being applied. Those judgments make sense to me only as intentional decisions to shape and burnish a narrative.

Speaking of The Narrative

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Charlie Pierce made this contribution to the discussion the other day at his verbose and annoying, yet quite rightminded blog at Esquire:

We had the event. Then we had the mourning. Then we had "Indomitability Day." Then we had the healing of the interfaith service at which the president gave a fine speech, and the demonstrations of solidarity at the Bruins game. That is the pattern of these things in our public lives, until the next one of these things happens, and then we do it all over again. We did it for Tucson after Columbine. We did it for Aurora after Tucson. We did it for Sandy Hook after Aurora. And, this week, we did it for Boston after Sandy Hook. It's the modern Stations of the Cross, with theme music, and logos, and Wolf Blitzer. We were done. We were healed. And then the Tsarnaev brothers came home. And one of them got away.

Pretty much so.  In the editing racket, we refer to that kind of thing as "boilerplate." It's worth contemplating how this news media narrative---and all the others---emerge into our lives as the Official Account of Public Occurrences.

The Narrative

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I woke up this Saturday morning listening to NPR "correspondents" stitch together a narrative of Boston Marathon international intrigue with Scotch tape and John McCain's used dental floss. As far as I can tell, an NPR "correspondent" does no actual reporting, but spends his or her workdays gleaning bon mots from think-tank experts, corporate spokesmen, and politicians speaking on the condition of anonymity.

The two suspects immigrated to this country from Chechnya (when the youngest was 8 or 9), you see, so therefore they must have been Muslim sleeper agents. It doesn't matter to the liberal NPR that no verified fact in the public domain indicates any foreign connection other than the suspects' country of origin and one trip to Russia by the older brother to renew his passport. Or that no third-party financing or logistical sophistication is evident in the known facts. Or that evidence known to date link only the older suspect to radical Islamic thought (via YouTube content)... and only within the past 5 years or so.

Meanwhile, NPR dutifully informs us that even though Boston police say the public threat has ended, Federal officials are likely to use a "public safety" exception to the surviving suspect's Miranda rights in order to grill him for "intelligence" (not "evidence") without a lawyer present. Then, implicitly accepting that possible approach to American law enforcement as legitimate on its face, they inform us that Senators McCain and Lindsey Graham are demanding that the surviving suspect be tried as an "enemy combatant."

Watch how this unfolds. I think it is an excellent opportunity to observe how corporate media assemble a narrative for the public. It is a feat of rhetoric, not news reporting. Techniques for producing a mass-media news narrative include the unwarranted emphasis of some facts over others; the omission of certain facts that don't fit the emerging narrative; unsupportable extrapolation from known facts to serve as a sort of roadmap for fleshing out the consensus narrative; injection of purported facts from anonymous sources; and so on. Watch how the coverage plays out and pretend you're the front-page editor for the Fifty50 Daily Pap-Smear---ask yourself where each presented fact came from, whether there are conflicting facts on the record, whether the item presented is a sourced fact, an opinion, or a speculation.

Also, ask yourself why officials and corporate media were reluctant to call the Boston Marathon bombing an act of terrorism until the suspects could be publicly branded as foreigners.

Boston strangler marathon bombing tea party

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I'll confine my contribution to the story of America's Bombing with a few stray notes about media coverage of it that I haven't seen in writing yet.

First, I'll look for some Beltway celebrity pundit to declare that during the "national tragedy" in Boston, the social media "came of age." Specifically, I expect someone to compare the Reddit crowdsourcing detective forums as well Facebook and Twitter sleuthing to how television news reporting "came of age" on the day JFK was assassinated in Dallas. The contribution of Reddit editors is certainly significant and worth considering, but celebrity commentators are always compelled to turn one thing into another, well known thing that we all can relate to. I'll leave the topic (for the moment) by stating that any such comparison is shrinkwrapped horseshit.

Second, instead of regurgitating all the corporate media reporting failures this past week, not limited to CNN and Murdoch's New York Post, I'll point to a really competent aggregator of confusing and contradictory breaking news reports: Greg Mitchell's Pressing Matters blog. He has been way ahead of other aggregators I follow (such as TPM and Huffington Post), pulling together news from a wide variety of sources and commenting minimally to provide a professional, old-school journalist's interpretation. Most of his remarks are directed at helping the reader to avoid overinterpreting the reporting or to point out examples of bad journalistic practice. I only noticed one or two ham-handed quips in all his liveblogging over the past 2 or 3 days.

Third: Boston was not on "lockdown," as all media were breathlessly reporting this morning. I say this because the use of that term is nonsensical. You can't put a city on "lockdown"! As far as I can tell, no curfew was declared either: the police told people in Boston and environs to stay off the streets and to "shelter in place." Both seem to be sensible recommendations. And I'll add that the phrase shelter in place is a legitimate term of art for terrorism and hostage-type situations. The use of lockdown, though, is an example of what I see as a creeping compulsion by media and their slavish consumers to glamorize every aspect of life as if it were an action movie or made-for-TV drama. The news, you see, becomes much more thrilling to consume if described in terms of entertainment programming. I think of it as a social disease---an infection of real culture with the virus of mass media narrative. In my lifetime I've seen journalism migrate from (1) traditional news reporting, to (2) finding the "story" in the news to "help" the audience understand, to (3) intentionally communicating durable "story lines" to which facts are fit and cherrypicked against. This last stage is The Narrative. Many media and political scholars argue that the narrative long predates my perception of memory of it, and I wouldn't argue against that. But I think my basic point here remains intact.

Last: NPR's so-called counterterrorism correspondent on All Things Considered tonight, "Dina Temple-Raston," behaved like a colossal douchebag by repeatedly telling everyone how taking the suspect alive was a top priority in order to get "intelligence" from him about "the plotters," with thick implications that we already know that the bombing was a coordinated foreign terrorist operation. No verified fact reported so far remotely supports that kind of language; everything that I've read and heard up to this moment indicates that two guys created some crude antipersonnel IEDs out of household materials and may have had their getaway car in queue for work at a body shop as late as Wednesday morning. Some plot! It may actually turn out to be true, but even the liberal NPR should know that it's best to wait for some facts to emerge before extrapolating too far along The Narrative.

Monsters

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Wanton marquee-grade killing, whether the media label it as "terrorism" or "tragedy," understandably raises the eternal question of where "evil" comes from, and why. Opinions are diverse, understandably, because this is arguably the central mystery of existence to anyone who believes that life has a moral or spiritual dimension (in other words, that the universe is more than a bin of particles that follows "laws of science" to move from chaos toward order). My opinions on that aren't important; they're as unimportant as, say, Mike Huckabee's.

But around these events, the question of what to do about them always struggles to be considered. Predictably to anyone who knows something about post-70s America, Second Amendment enthusiasts and the politicians who exploit their preoccupation tell everyone else that "now is not the time" to talk about gun carnage because, after all, it is people who kill people. Everyone else is also admonished not to "politicize" tragedy, even though it's legitimate and imperative to discuss whether public policy is partially to blame or whether changes in public policy could reduce the frequency and carnage of mass shootings. Corporate media always propagate this conservative admonition, and are its foremost adherents.

I've got nothing profound to offer, but here is a small survey of media response with a comment or two.

This whole Charlie Pierce piece is worth reading. He ties any discussion of gun "tragedies" to the fundamental conservative fallacy---that (to borrow Margaret Thatcher's radical confession of global conservative principles) "there is no such thing as society":

There are things we must do together, in a political context, because these things are too big — and, in this case, too monstrous — for us to handle alone. Self-government and its institutions — public schools, police and fire departments, the ridiculously underfunded mental-health facilities, and all the people to whom we increasingly begrudge their salaries — are the only things keeping us from falling back into barbarism, and the only things keeping us safe and sane when one of us falls back into it on their own.

I agree. The absolute minimal conversation we should be having about gun violence, whether or not conservatives think any time is an appropriate time, is about the necessity of understanding that America needs fully funded and professional education, law enforcement, emergency response, and healthcare institutions... period. If the well off and the Job Creators don't want to pay for the privilege of enjoying an orderly society, they should repatriate their warty asses to China or Haiti.

Second, there is this piece by Maggie Koerth-Baker about "what science says" about gun control. Here is her profound takeaway:

Some studies are funded by biased institutions. Some studies aren't peer reviewed. Some studies feature poorly thought-out methodology.

All of that leads to a mess of frequently contradictory conclusions that can, frankly, be used to support just about any position you'd like to put forward. So, basically, just because you can support your position, don't think that makes you absolutely correct.

As so-called science writers go, Koerth-Baker is especially useless to me, with her patronizing and pseudo-profundities. But I think her conclusion is typical corporate media treatment: it's all just too complicated for us poor journalists and citizens to make heads or tails of, so let's all just love one another. Thanks for nothing, Maggie.

Speaking of the "media role" in public tragedy, the following is something I stumbled across this morning. It's a Roger Ebert anecdote about an interview he gave to NBC news (never aired) after Columbine (via BoingBoing again) in which the reporter was looking to cherry-pick quotes about violent movies causing gun violence. Ebert wouldn't play along:

The reporter looked disappointed, so I offered her my theory. "Events like this," I said, "if they are influenced by anything, are influenced by news programs like your own. When an unbalanced kid walks into a school and starts shooting, it becomes a major media event. Cable news drops ordinary programming and goes around the clock with it. The story is assigned a logo and a theme song; these two kids were packaged as the Trench Coat Mafia. The message is clear to other disturbed kids around the country: If I shoot up my school, I can be famous. The TV will talk about nothing else but me. Experts will try to figure out what I was thinking. The kids and teachers at school will see they shouldn't have messed with me. I'll go out in a blaze of glory."

In short, I said, events like Columbine are influenced far less by violent movies than by CNN, the NBC Nightly News and all the other news media, who glorify the killers in the guise of "explaining" them.

As much as public policy, this is a piece of the problem that needs to be discussed. Logos and branding---bullseye. Personally, I wouldn't dismiss the media's normalization of violence as sensual and pre-political entertainment as quickly as Ebert seems to, but Hollywood is not directly responsible for Columbine or Tucson or Newtown.

And finally, there's this last word on the topic, straight from the mouth of a genuine monster:

Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee attributed the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in part to restrictions on school prayer and religious materials in the classroom. 

"We ask why there is violence in our schools, but we have systematically removed God from our schools," Huckabee said on Fox News, discussing the murder spree that took the lives of 20 children and 6 adults in Newtown, CT that morning. "Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage?"

As Rob Bechizza said about Huckabee's comments back on BoingBoing: "Don't be angry. Just understand what he understands: that this is political."

I think the conversation needs to be much more far-reaching than the topic of gun control. It needs to examine how this society has become so detached from its own collective humanity that even a discussion of gun control is taboo within both of our major political parties while kids are slaughtered on their mats in kindergarten.

Bullied

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I think Charlie Pierce at the Esquire Politics Blog makes the two most important points you'll hear in the coming week about Mitt Romney's VP candidate:

Paul Ryan is an authentically dangerous zealot. He does not want to reform entitlements. He wants to eliminate them. He wants to eliminate them because he doesn't believe they are a legitimate function of government. He is a smiling, aw-shucks murderer of opportunity, a creator of dystopias in which he never will have to live. This now is an argument not over what kind of political commonwealth we will have, but rather whether or not we will have one at all, because Paul Ryan does not believe in the most primary institution of that commonwealth -- our government. The first three words of the Preamble to the Constitution make a lie out of every speech he's ever given. He looks at the country and sees its government as an something alien that is holding down the individual entrepreneurial genius of 200 million people, and not as their creation, and the vehicle through which that genius can be channelled for the general welfare.

Pierce, like Paul Krugman specifically on economics, has been way out in front of the pack in their fingering Ryan as a phony and a troglodyte. They've made it clear, with argumentation and documentation, that his reputation for both intellectualism and decency are thinly sliced baloney served to us corporate celebrity pundits.

But I think Pierce makes an even more salient point as a throwaway line:

Leave it to Willard Romney, international man of principle, to get himself bullied into being bold and independent.

I agree. Think about what what Romney personally has to gain by selecting a clone of himself. A clone who is actually popular with the Republican base and may be popular with many so-called swing voters. Answer: nothing.

I think there is a nontrivial probability that Romney has been bullied into demoting himself to the role of patsy, so to speak, in a scheme by a cabal of evil men.

Odd: gas prices have fallen

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I almost failed to notice that a gallon of gasoline costs about $0.50 less than it did here at the end of March. I guess this price decline didn't rise to my awareness because I haven't heard Republican congressmen and centrist pundits gabbing nonstop on NPR about how President Obama has done such an extraordinary job in this connection.

Don't mind them---they're morons

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Our correspondent in the Grampian Hills sends a riddle:

I saw [a] preview for the 3 stooges movie—I think it opens around mid April. They (whoever they are) seem to have the impersonations down OK but, why?

That is a bit of a noodle-scratcher, true. Beer-D has provided the most salient market-based analysis I've heard. (Yes, Stooge fans have been discussing this pending corporate profiteering atrocity for awhile.)

As Beer-D sees it, it's difficult to fathom what audience the movie producers are targeting. For kids who aren't familiar with the Stooges, none of the references or tributes to the original cast members will register. People of any age who did not like the original Stooges will have no interest in subjecting themselves to a impersonation of them. And, of course, it is hard to believe that any fans of the original Stooges will respond to the release with anything except contempt.

Some few charitable people might at least appreciate any craftsmanship and dedication that the actors may have applied to recreating the original characters and situations. But I don't think that will provide a sufficient basis for either a blockbuster box office or a career boost for the director. However, I may be wrong, and Beer-D may have missed something: maybe the target audiences are the Chinese and the French.

The fall product rollout [update]

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A few days after I mused here about the new war for which the neocons and corporate media have formed their very own Occupy-style drum circle I had this idea, but I felt it would sound too silly to trouble you with before giving careful consideration to my choice of wording. Welp, as seen on Balloon Juice, it looks like someone has described the prospective conspiracy that corporate media would be expected to denounce as... "a conspiracy theory":

Here’s a prediction. Netanyahu, in league and concert with Romney, Santorum and Gingrich, will make his move to get rid of Obama soon. And he will be more lethal to this president than any of his domestic foes.

See, I think there are certain ideas that may be too dangerous for a nobody like me to fluff up on my crummy blog, but Andrew Sullivan evidently thinks his high profile as a celebrity blogger will protect him from right-wing opprobrium. We'll see about that.

You may remember back in January when the publisher of the Atlanta Jewish Times had to "step down" for suggesting that maybe "Israel's most inner circles" might "order a hit" on Barack Obama in order to rid themselves of an unfriendly US president. So here's another approach that might amount to a fatal political hit if the "product" were rolled out as an October Surprise.

I don't think this idea is too insane to have been dreamed of, kicked around all hush-hush-like, or even to have arrived at some stage of planning. Because the marketplace of ideas is oversupplied with insanity. I'm sure the very idea quickens the pulse of many. And who knows: maybe certain people with the right connections and levers think they could get away with such a thing. But if that's the case, they are making one of the classic strategic blunders: underestimating the adversary.

As it happens, every President of the United States has his own "most inner circle," not to mention a heavy metal national security apparatus and---thanks to Richard Bruce Cheney and The Boy Who Would Be President---a carload of extra-constitutional surveillance and law-enforcement powers. And this one knows how to play 10-dimensional chess, so watch out.

Update: I forgot to state that any such conspiracy would not involve nobodies like Santorum, Gingrich, or Romney. But I do think it's fully plausible that it could involve Americans. I don't think there is any shortage of latent traitors on the far right.

Sneak preview of the fall product line

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Many of us remember reading about the July 2002 Downing Street Memo, in which we learned the the chief of Britain's MI6 had expressed the view that our very own President of the United States

wanted to remove Saddam Hussein, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.

The US public learned of this interesting fact through a British press leak in 2005, well after the deadly Bush/Cheney hobby horse had galloped out of the corral with the liberal New York Times glued into the saddle like a pair of Judith Miller's panties. When President Obama schlepped the last combat troops out of Iraq (or so "they" say) late last year, it wasn't just because he's a Nice Guy: it was because that corporation-driven war of aggression had no more measurable public support and addressed no critical US security interest.

Everyone who is nostalgic for a post-911 stiffie should be happy to hear that British Foreign Secretary William Hague is blaming Iran for threatening to make the civilized nations of Terra launch a "new cold war." That's mighty thoughty of the Persians, as Bullwinkle used to say, because it seems that this is exactly what all true patriots both happen to want and want to happen. And by all true patriots, I am referring to the usual cast of neocon civilian politicians and their heralds employed by the corporate media. Have you been sensing this lately, too?

Hillary for VP!!!

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A correspondent has been annoying me for what seems like months about the fantasy some people have that Obama's best chance to be re-elected involves putting Joe Biden out to stud and selecting Hillary Clinton to run in his place. I ran out of patience even faster than I usually do about things, after explaining my view that a political strategy must involve some actual strategy. A presidential political strategy must not only have a grand objective, but it also must have an accurate and concrete idea about handling the obstacles to achieving that objective.

Today my correspondent sent a link to this op-ed column on the topic by former Times executive editor Bill Keller, which proposes that it's time for this dumb idea to ascend from the musty precincts of "the blogs" and be taken seriously... because, for some reason. He says the arguments in favor of it "are as simple as one-two-three":

One: it does more to guarantee Obama’s re-election than anything else the Democrats can do. Two: it improves the chances that, come next January, he will not be a lame duck with a gridlocked Congress but a rejuvenated president with a mandate and a Congress that may be a little less forbidding. Three: it makes Hillary the party’s heir apparent in 2016.

Simple for simpletons (not counting my correspondent, who is just enthralled with his own wishful thinking). Now, over the years I've gotten a clear impression that many commentators think Bill Keller is quite the simpleton. So I googled "bill keller stupidity," and I found this point-by-point rebuttal by Alex Pareene at Salon:

One: What? Prove it, maybe? Two: Haha what, again? Congress will get ungridlocked if the president switches vice presidents? To a Clinton? Three: OK, but what if Obama/Clinton loses? And if Obama wins again wouldn’t any Democrat be at a disadvantage in 2016 due to historical trends anyway, making it a “safer” bet to not be his running mate, assuming she actually wants to be president still, which is not at all a given?

One-two-three!!! See? Anyone can play!

[I'll interject a thought here about "Two". I don't think most people appreciate why "the Clinton brand" is disliked by many on the left and insanely despised by everyone on the right.]

If you're either interested in or sick of the absurd storyline that Hillary Clinton will ride in, chickenfight-wise, on the shoulders of her peckerwood husband to save Obama's electoral hash this year, I suggest that you read the whole Keller op-ed first, and then Pareene's piece. Pareene's rebuttal goes beyond the easy mockery of Keller to discuss some inconvenient truths that Hillary fans gloss over. Such as the fact that there is no evidence-based argument to support their fantasy.

So Hillary Clinton won the Gallup "beauty contest" of most-admired women in the US: what do you think that is worth to Obama in terms of either electoral or popular votes? Likewise for the concrete advantages conferred to Obama through Hillary's application of campaign warmth and female body parts? Show your work.

Your right to peacefully assemble

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I am perversely thankful to the Bush/Cheney administration for pulling the friendly mask off the authoritarian homunculus living at the core of Movement Conservatism. I assume they dropped the pretense of neighborly Reaganism because they felt they were dealing from a position of unassailable strength---strength that can be reinforced when ordinary people "dummy up" due to a gnawing fear of government reprisals. Still, the illusion of certain democratic customs such as the freedom to peacefully assemble must be maintained in order to support the traditional story line that America is the greatest nation in the 6,000-year history of Earth, because at least we know we're free.

From my vantage point it seems that we are now seeing historic new limitations on the right to peacefully assemble. It appears that those limitations are triggered when nonviolent protests start to seriously interfere with The Spectacle that is the establishment media narrative about political economy. So as a result, we wake up to an image of "The World's Policeman" (so to speak) waging chemical warfare on University of California - Davis students sitting peacefully as part of an Occupy protest. Even when the state has a legitimate law enforcement interest in removing nonviolent protestors from a site, no manner of intentional (i.e., premeditated) brutality is justifiable. The world may note that the victims don't appear to be rowdy, body-painted, bongo-playing dopers, not that such an appearance would justify brutality anyway. My point is that the people being sprayed are probably pretty much like you and your neighbors (or their kids).

The risk that establishment interests take when deploying this kind of force is that ordinary Americans---the Silent Majority of the 21st century---may actually both note and remember with revulsion images like the one above (shot by one Louise Macabitas and found in an online photostream). With that thought in mind, watch this YouTube clip:



I suggest that you watch the whole thing, but especially around 6:15 in the video. These brave kids, as well behaved as anyone could possibly expect under the circumstances, pull off something amazing with nothing but words and The People's Microphone. And, to the establishment, it is much more threatening than bongos, throwing bricks, or setting fires.

In coming weeks I'm afraid we'll see more incidents involving movement infiltrators and provocateurs for the purpose of marginalizing the protestors. Even worse, I also feel that the despicable SOPA legislation now before Congress is aimed not at "online pirates," but online protestors. This legislation, which I've intended to write about and will try to get to, will give both government and industry powerful tools for suppressing online political dissent under cover of "protecting creator's rights." YouTube is dead in the SOPA crosshairs. And, finally, look for a huge push to formally outlaw the recording or photographing of police activity occurring in the public domain.

Also, look for Officer Pepper Spray to become America's next Joe The Plumber.

I should note that I found the media embedded above at Balloon Juice.

Brazen and bizarre, indeed!

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It looks like the movers and shakers may be coming around to the RubberCrutch view of the absurd hype the Justice and State departments applied to the arrest of some Iranian-American guy who allegedly was involved in a cunning plot to exterminate the Saudi ambassador to the land of the free and the home of the brave. Reuters reports via TPM (anonymous sources, admittedly, and possibly Obama opponents with a political axe to grind)  that "officials" have

questioned the wisdom of the White House strategy in using the affair to rapidly push for tougher sanctions on Tehran, increasing regional tensions.

"A lot of people basically feel really suspicious about this," one official said, questioning the White House's motivation "in ratcheting this thing up so quickly."

Exactly my point. That, and the remarkable similarity of the initial journalistic language and perspective on the event, which gave strong evidence that corporate media and blogs were largely working from on set of administration-spoonfed talking points. "Pack journalism" isn't really news in itself, and it was pretty much considered the norm (with disgust) even back when I was studying the trade in the late 1980s. But this particular example seemed unusually blatant given the strikingly uniform vocabulary and attitude about the story.

Again, to be clear and with due respect to nuance, I am not dismissing the probability that there was some kind of plot in the works, nor am I jumping to any conclusions about how serious the plot may have been (even though we have strong indications that the suspects may fall into the category of "bumbling amateurs"). My points are that Obama officials handled the release of this information with noteworthy incompetence given the foreign policy implications of prematurely boiling up a potful of turds with Iran; and that the initial media coverage serves as a clear example of journalistic malpractice.

Brazen administration, bizarre media coverage. But why? I don't buy suggestions that it was intended to be a distraction from the rotten economy or an election-year stunt... because (1) no competent strategist could seriously believe that it could provide a convincing distraction, and (2) it's not an election year! The timing of the thing just makes no sense considering how high of a profile the news was given. Any alternate concepts out there?

Smells like somebody is wagging a dog

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If there’s one thing that the poodle media agree on today, it’s that the alleged Iranian/druglord plot to kill a Saudi ambassador in Washington is "brazen." Brazen and bizarre, in fact! Why, did you know that one of the alleged malefactors even showed a gross disregard for innocent human life by dismissing the significance of “collateral damage” resulting from blowing up the ambassador’s favorite DC eatery? Brazen! Even Hillary Clinton thinks so:

"This plot, very fortunately disrupted by the excellent work of our law enforcement and intelligence professionals, was a flagrant violation of international and U.S. law, and a dangerous escalation of the Iranian government's long-standing use of political violence and sponsorship of terrorism.... This kind of reckless act undermines international norms and the international system," she said.

"Iran must be held accountable for its actions....We will work closely with our international partners to increase Iran's isolation and the pressure on its government, and we call upon other nations to join us in condemning this threat to international peace and security." 

As Frazier Thomas used to say, "Hold the phone!" The fact that this episode rises only to the level of an allegation is important aside from any due process considerations for the accused. Here's our Secretary of State making a thinly veiled threat that reasonable people might understand to be the overture to another "coalition of the willing" cattle call. That's what I call brazen and bizarre, actually, over-reactionwise. Does this administration have a "Persian Fall" in mind? Is it an attempt to sow more discord within the fractious Iranian government? A Justice Department dog-and-pony show to distract Republicans and the media from the Fast And Furious cockup?

Holder said the two alleged plotters had not yet acquired explosives but had arranged for nearly $100,000 to be wired to a New York bank account in the name of the hired hit man as a down payment. The proposed hit man was actually an informant working for U.S. law enforcement.

What in the world are "Iranian-backed emissaries," by the way? The US has no diplomatic relations with Iran. Did he mean to say "guys hired by someone in Iran"?

So all day I was reading about and hearing about this brazen and bizarre "terror" plot, with media personalities from BoingBoing to the "mothership" oldies network declaring with pre-rehearsed incredulity that it sounded like something straight out of a "spy thriller." Yes, it does, doesn't it? I wonder where all our media mouthpieces got their talking points this morning.

Just to be clear: good for the FBI and DEA if they stopped a terrorism plot in the early stages. And yes, we should be concerned if Iranian officials were in fact financing a plot of the nature reported. But is it really any more brazen and bizarre than, say, an airline passenger with a smoldering bomb in his underpants? Or that day when a bunch of Saudi nationals hijacked and crashed some passenger jets in America? Or a State Department employee gunning down two men in the streets of Lahore, Pakistan? Just asking (don't want to drone on and on about it).

Yesterday's doke

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Provided yesterday courtesy of John Cole's brother:

“Fox News. You know what that is? Nickelodeon for people with dementia.”

Please make a note of it.

Meanwhile, under the radar

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I saw this post by David Dayen linked to Heather Digby Parton's Hullaballo blog. It illustrates the other major crime of professional malpractice committed by the corporation-directed media that provide most of what most Americans accept in good faith as news.

The gist of it is that Republican lawmakers are being confronted at their August "town hall meetings" by ordinary people who are firmly demanding to know why legislators (John McCain, for example) believe that reducing taxes on corporations or wealthy people will help the economy in the absence of evidence. But there's not a peep about it on CNN, Fox, or NPR. Dayen's point is that last summer the media were all eyes and ears as "tea partiers" disrupted these town hall meetings last August, even brandishing or carrying concealed weapons in some cases. And why not? I leave this question as an exercise for the reader.

Dayen highlights examples published in the hometown press of conservative strongholds such as North Dakota, Tucson, Wilkes-Barre, PA, and Lincoln, NE. Dayen also claims that someone has compiled more than 100 such stories from around the nation, but unfortunately he doesn't provide a link to document that. But that's what the New York Times and the CNN national news desks are for, I'd think. Not a peep, though.

To me, the interesting thing is that these appear to be examples of everyday people who, without any help from the national media or national political leaders of either party are piecing together the story for themselves... the story being that the conventional wisdom we're being force-fed about deficits, debt ceilings, and "job-creating" rich people may be starting to wear thin.

In front of our noses

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This Krugman blog post highlights a virtually unreported detail about the past week of financial-world turmoil on the heels of the S&P downgrade of US debt:

A week ago, before the S&P downgrade, the interest rate on US 10-year bonds was 2.56 percent. As I write this, it’s 2.24 percent, with the yield on inflation-protected bonds actually negative.

You would think this would amount to strong evidence that the downgrade totally failed to shake confidence in US debt.

Yet people who listen to radio and TV reporting tell me that most stories attribute the stock plunge to the downgrade, and are telling listeners that the case for immediate spending cuts has gotten even stronger.

Get it? This is how the corporate narrative works. The Situationists figured it out more than 40 years ago:

[They] argued in 1967 that spectacular features like mass media and advertising have a central role in an advanced capitalist society, which is to show a fake reality in order to mask the real capitalist degradation of human life.

Their term for the narrative and its associated creations and fabrications was The Spectacle. Sounds correct to me.

Be that as it may, I call it criminal malpractice by the news media. Ordinary people who consider themselves to be very well informed because they follow the "nice" media CNN, MSNBC, Newsweek, The New York Times, and NPR are being deliberately misled. I call it deliberate deception because I know what a fucking news editor is really supposed to do for a paycheck.

One might think that our very own President North Star would have been hammering this point home for the past day or two, or maybe that he'll get around to it next week. But in order to do that, he would have to be a leader of sorts, with a few guts inside his skin. Where have you gone, Huey Long? Our nation turns its longing eyes to you. Goo goo goo joob.